Life Behind the Scenes of The Mast, PLU Student-led Newspaper

This year, PLU’s student-led newspaper, The Mast, is celebrating its 100th anniversary, the age close to some of the most influential national college newspapers. We have a staff of 30 people, with 11 in upper management and the rest in the Reporters & Photographers team. So far this year, we’ve had three printed issues: a “Welcome Back & Mast’s Anniversary” issue, and two regular 12-page issues. We also have an Instagram where we post more time-sensitive news.

My name is Kateryna, and I am Editor-in-Chief of The Mast for the 2024-2025 academic year. The official description of my position is pretty long, but I would describe it as “Responsible for everything and in charge of most of the things”. It’s quite a bit of work. It is also fun.

I am in my second year of studying at PLU and I have been with The Mast almost since my first day here. So I am not exaggerating when I say that it is fun. I am also a big fan of writing and journalism.

Anyway, let me take you on a journey of The Mast’s first issue this year.

An interesting fact about college clubs and organizations is that they have a constant flow of people coming and going. So we started off our year eagerly looking for new reporters. A lot of time was spent tabling in the University Center, sending out emails to departments, and giving out flyers. And then next thing I knew, we had 25 people attending our second meeting in September. I think that’s when I first knew that we got it.

We didn’t want to lose time, so shortly after doing introductions, a “Mast 101 workshop”, and a “Journalism Writing” workshop, we assigned stories. By the month of October all new reporters were working on their stories and (hopefully) knew what they were doing.

Right now, we are functioning on a monthly printing cycle where reporters have two weeks to interview and write, and two weeks to improve the articles with their section editors. That being said, on October 31 (spooky!), we went to our printing company and picked up 2,500 copies of The Mast’s first full issue of the year. The issue had a variety of stories about on-campus events, reviews, opinions, news, and sports. And, of course, we couldn’t skip our monthly comic and a word-search — items widely loved by PLU students.

The Mast is not just about writing. Like one of our members said, “It’s moments in between that truly matter.” And it’s true, the moments in between an idea for an article and a printed issue in our hands are the most precious ones. We have fun times and we have ‘lock-in and get this done’ times, we laugh and we have serious conversations, we hang out and we make important decisions. Overall, we are just students at PLU, doing our little student things and enjoying life.